"The New Atheists are back — and dumber than ever"

[Ravenshire]

Delicate should do a name change to something a little more truthful and accurate. Desperate, perhaps?

[Cato]

I have predicted the author of this thread from the title alone. Am I psychic?

Better to claim psychic abilities else Delicate will prevent the sun from rising in order to disprove your conclusion was the result of simple inductive reasoning.

[Cato]

Delicate should do a name change to something a little more truthful and accurate. Desperate, perhaps?

No complaints here, but I vote 'Dolt'.

[Delicate]

Explain! I don't feel like reading the piece right now

From the article:

Muslims have an average of 3.1 children per woman, while Christians have 2.7. That contrasts with 1.7 for the unaffiliated, a rate significantly below replacement level. If only the religious would restrain their breeding, Dennett might say, education and the technological proliferation of information would work their wonders and produce a global decline in faith. But as it is, every person who  ends up being replaced by two (or more) who are raised to believe in the old superstitions. The atheistic truth just can't keep up.

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.

[abaris]

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.

Well, a good education is usually sufficient to call bullshit where bullshit's due. I'm talking about something as exotic as science class in school and not Texan Textbooks.

I'm not sure what you actually are. If you're a creationist, every word probably hits a brick wall and any debate seems futile, since I'm not stooping to that level. If you're not, I wonder how you can go with a humanocentric deity, since humanity is nothing but a fart in the wind compared to other species preceding us. We've clocked off about 5 percent of the time dinosaurs roamed the lands. Just to put things into perspective.

[Mr.wizard]

How much more of this crap are you going to post? If you want to attack atheism then prove god exists, instead of surfing the net looking for opinion pieces by other idiots who cant grasp the concept of atheism.

[Aoi Magi]

This Damon Linker dude fails at Math.

Explain! I don't feel like reading the piece right now

Summary:

Polls suggest religion is on the decline
Religious "point by point" rebuttal: Yes the polls does say that, but the religious will just procreate more than the atheists and beat them in population percentage.

[ignoramus]

Delicate! It's Christmas day! Stop being a dick and give us a break from your bullshit, will ya!
Enjoy Christmas lunch.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The problem with religious repopulation as a strategy is that the information available to youth nowadays makes religious programming harder to enforce and easier to question.

[robvalue]

Oh look, he's "curious" again about atheists.