Atheists and suicide

[liam]

Both studies are some 100+ years out of date.

I am aware that Durkheim's study was old it was just the flagship study and I thought most people would be more familiar with it, allow me to elaborate:
studies on religious differences
Becker et al. 2012
Swiss national cohort 2000
Dublin 1963
Halbwachs 1930
Ultee, Arts & Flap 1996 (supports durkheimian hypothesis of social support and integration)
etc etc etc.
Furthermore, it is not wrong because it is old. It may be less right but this does not mean to say that there is no truth in it at all.

Religiously unaffiliated subjects are more prone to depressive disorders in general

yup, it's easier to be depressed when you don't see the world through rose-tinted glasses.

[Norfolk And Chance]

I would never have the guts to commit suicide. I like living and I respect the everlasting nothingness of death enough to figure that it can wait until another day.

[libalchris]

I would never have the guts to commit suicide. I like living and I respect the everlasting nothingness of death enough to figure that it can wait until another day.

If anything my deconversion made me LESS likely to commit suicide. Really the only depressing thing brought about by my deconversion is that I WOULD some day die, which definitely isn't going to make me want to commit suicide, rather postpone by death as long as possible.

And while I definitely find it easy to see how an atheist could be more subject to depression and what not, for me personally I think I'm happier now than I've ever been! (then again, correlation doesn't always equal causation, but so far I've always managed to be positive in life.)

[liam]

People aren't suicidal because of their set of beliefs or because of the group to which they belong, they are only suicidal because of their circumstances and those do change between groups. Obviously the religious community is, and unfortunately so, the closer community out of theist and atheist. I don't understand how this statistic is an argument for religion though, confounding stuff indeed.

[Rev. Rye]

I've sometimes wondered if suicide rates are higher amongst atheists, once ultimate meaning in life is removed suicide can be rationalized. Interesting little article I found.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article....urnalID=13

Let's let Pres. Bartlett explains the flaw in that argument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL_vHDjG5Wk

[Angrboda]

"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower


Some theist here recently referred to William Lane Craig as a scientist. I about swallowed my tongue.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@liam

Emile Durkheim a was as brilliant pioneering sociologists, 'Suide' was still being read when I was an undergraduate in the 1980's and probably still is,for all I know. My perception is that his great contribution in "Suide" was his examination of the concept of 'anomie',for an individual and society, rather than his statistical analysis,which I think is flawed:


Durkheim made his observations in nineteenth century CATHOLIC France. Suicide shamed the family and a suicide could not be buried in hallowed ground. I think it's reasonable to suppose Catholic families would have done all they could to conceal the fact of a suicide. That could well have skewed any statistical records.

Something similar has been found in modern day US with male teen suicides but reversed. It seems clear that in at least some cases called suicide,the actual cause was auto-erotic asphyfxiation. Seems some families would rather believe their son committed suicide than accept he was a sexual being.


To dismiss Durkheim simply on the basis of when his work was done is simply ignorant.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Liam, the quote below is for those unfamiliar with Durkheim, not to patronise you.

Anomie describes a lack of social norms; "normlessness".[1] It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.[2] It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim borrowed the word from French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau. Durkheim never uses the term normlessness; rather, he describes anomie as "a rule that is a lack of rule," "derangement," and "an insatiable will."[3]

For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:

Anomie in common parlance is thought to mean something like "at loose ends". The Oxford English Dictionary lists a range of definitions, beginning with a disregard of divine law, through the 19th and 20th century sociological terms meaning an absence of accepted social standards or values. Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices ... Durkheim also formally posited anomie as a mismatch, not simply as the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie, a mismatch between individual circumstances and larger social mores. Thus, fatalistic suicide arises when a person is too rule-governed, when there is ... no free horizon of expectation.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

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@Rev

Jed Bartlett is my favourite US president

[Tempus]

"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

I always admire people who can express complex ideas in a simple and clear manner. It's one thing to understand an idea; another thing to communicate it. Not specifically related to that point, but it made me think of this.

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I would never have the guts to commit suicide.

That's how I felt in the past (and still do, I guess). I'm not afraid of death so much as the process of dying; the ending of life rather than beginning of death. Or an attempt ending in paralysis or something like that where I become completely dependant or "trapped" inside my own body.

[genkaus]

The atheist chap mentions ayer, quine and russell, all philosophers. All that Craig is showing is that to try and imply (as the atheist does) that most of the modern intelligentsia are atheists is refuted by the sheer number of Christian philosophy professors in modern prestigious universities. He lists names because the ones the atheist mentions are dead, "he's dead too!"

Go watch the video again and try to understand the context of those names. Those names are not a part of modern intelligentsia, those are the names of philosophers whose work is forms the basis of modern philosophies. The atheist was refuting Craig's stupid claim that there has been a revolution in philosophy in last fifty years by pointing out whose work is still the basis of it.

[Zen Badger]

Found this interesting article..

http://www.adherents.com/misc/religion_suicide.html


This is the closing comment....

If your "discussion" of the relative merits of your belief system devolves into pointing out the suicide rate within a specific population, then you have already lost the argument, because you have abandoned substantitive dialogue in favor of an appeal to tangential sensationalism.