The fall of atheism

[otseng]

I've been stumbling into several articles recently on the decline of atheism around the world. They mention that the intellectual and ethical support for atheism has proved wanting.

Science, 'frauds' trigger a decline in atheism

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings.

The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

The rise and fall of atheism

Stephen Jay Gould, renowned defender of evolution, in his statement that the God question cannot be solved by science. A purely scientific debate must end in agnosticism, says Gould. I conclude that as atheism declines, agnosticism might correspondingly increase.

Four genocides in the twentieth century which involved millions of deaths were by atheistic regimes. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheists and their regimes were officially atheistic. These mass atrocities ruin the moral credentials of atheism. Dostoyevski wisely warned that without God every evil thing can be permitted.

Conclusion: Atheism is a waning force in the world.

The incoming sea of faith

Historians of ideas often note that atheism is the ideal religion of modernity — the cultural period ushered in by the Enlightenment. But that had been displaced by postmodernity, which rejects precisely those aspects of modernity that made atheism the obvious choice as the preferred modern religion. Postmodernity has thus spawned post-atheism.

The Collapse Of Atheism

Although some people may still be unaware of it, there has been a huge change in the field of science and philosophy in the last 20-25 years. Atheism, that has so influenced the world of science and thought, is now undergoing an irrevocable collapse.

[Nyril]

Unless your intent was to mock the articles you selected, half of your clips showed the bias of the authors, and give me little reason to credit them with anything more then wishful thinking.

From your first clip:

The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

What precisely does this mean? I've looked at it a number of ways, and it strikes me to be extremely bigoted in nature.

From your second clip:

Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheists and their regimes were officially atheistic. These mass atrocities ruin the moral credentials of atheism.

Hitler, in every way shape and form was a Christian. His army marched with the words, "God is with us" emblazoned on their belt buckles, and in his book he spoke of doing god's work. If you are free to say he wasn't a true Christian, then I would like to say that every single atheist you bring up against us wasn't a true atheist.

As for the rest of it, all it shows is that atheists can be bad people. I hardly see how that is relevant.

As for your last clip page:

Darwinism offered a so-called scientific answer to the question “How did living things and man come into existence?” something atheists had been unable to do for centuries. He claimed that there was a mechanism in nature that gave life to inanimate matter and then produced all the millions of different living species. A great many people came to believe that deception. By the end of the 19th century, atheists had established a “world view” that they believed accounted for everything.

They denied that the universe had been created, saying that it had existed for ever and had no beginning. They suggested that the order and equilibrium in the universe were the result of chance, and that there was no purpose in it. They imagined that Darwinism accounted for the emergence of man and all living things.

Yet every one of these views collapsed with scientific, political and sociological advances in the 20th century. Discoveries in a great number of fields, from astronomy to biology, from psychology to social ethics, fundamentally overturned the most basic assumptions of atheism.

Although it may see, a bit rude, this article seems to consist entirely of generic slams against evolution.

Nothing you posted references a poll/study/census showing atheism is in decline. As I said earlier, you found 4 authors guilty of wishful thinking, and nothing more.

[ST88]

Science, 'frauds' trigger a decline in atheism

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings.

The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

Mass opinion is no way to form a philosophy.

The rise and fall of atheism

Stephen Jay Gould, renowned defender of evolution, in his statement that the God question cannot be solved by science. A purely scientific debate must end in agnosticism, says Gould. I conclude that as atheism declines, agnosticism might correspondingly increase.

Four genocides in the twentieth century which involved millions of deaths were by atheistic regimes. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheists and their regimes were officially atheistic. These mass atrocities ruin the moral credentials of atheism. Dostoyevski wisely warned that without God every evil thing can be permitted.

Conclusion: Atheism is a waning force in the world.

Hitler was not atheist. These other "atheists" did not kill in the name of atheism -- rather, they killed in the name of stamping out alternative power structures. They most certainly killed other atheists, which is quite unlike religous genocide, of which there are plenty of examples: Bosnia, Sudan, Armenia, 9/11 -- and that's not even counting events before the Enlightenment.

However, I would agree that strict Atheism is in decline, but not for the reasons above. The ridiculous genocide argument only confirms that religion has little effect either way when it comes to killing people. I define strict atheism as strong atheism, or the active denial in specific gods, which is superfluous and irrational. Philosophically, it has just as many legs to stand on as any sort of religiousness, and it's psychologically more scary for individuals. This, I think, is the main reason it's in decline. It's too scary to think of the universe as nothing more than an astrophysics machine. The article you reference says that Christianity is not benefitting from this, rather, paganism is on the rise, which tells me that spirituality is on the rise, not religiousness.

As far back as David Hume, strict atheism has not been the so-called religion of the Enlightenment. Rather, agnosticism has. The idea that religion and God doesn't exist is not as intellectually rigorous or satisfying as the idea that the question of a supernatural existence doesn't matter all that much. I think what Atheism as a movement (if there can be such a thing) is going through now is exactly what adherents to a particular belief go through every once in a while -- a good hard look at the assumptions that underlie the movement. The philosophy can only benefit from such introspections.

[QED]

I'd like to address the points from the first article appearing in the Washington Post which suggests that science is losing its scientific underpinnigs:

British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as any, has turned his back on atheism, saying it is impossible for evolution to account for the fact that one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

As a fellow Brit, I think I can identify his position as straddling both sides of the fence (a national sport over here). Wikipedia has a summary of this mans position Better still, an interview with Mr. Flew sheds more light on his stance. I think it shows just how much 'spin' has been applied to fulfill the wishes of the of the original article.

Another article by Victor J. Stenger titled Flew's Flawed Science pays ample consideration to the key issues. As for his claim that "it is impossible for evolution to account for the fact that one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica" I cannot find a reference to this - but I'm fascinated enough to track it down.

As for the rest of the article we have a study that is reported to show the power of faith and prayer in aiding recovery from illness, a bit of an 'old chestnut' that fails to stand out from similar studies which have repeatedly demonstrated the 'Placebo effect'

Atheism's other Achilles' heels are the acts on inhumanity and lunacy committed in its name.
"With time, [atheism] turned out to have just as many frauds, psychopaths and careerists as religion does. ... With Stalin and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices of the Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing compared to what the Spanish visited upon the South American Indians. Mud-slinging like this suggests that the good ideas have started to dry up already.

So the next piece comes as no surprise:

The Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, dean of Vienna University's divinity school and one of the world's most distinguished sociologists of religion, said atheists in Europe have become "an infinitesimally small group."
"There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research," he said.

Presumably the Washington Times felt sufficiently confident that the inhabitants of this small Country called "Europe" might be so few in number as to let this article go unnoticed

[micatala]

As a said earlier, you found 4 authors guilty of wishful thinking, and nothing more.

Perhaps Otseng is right about the 'decline of atheism', but I would have to agree with Nyril that these articles seem at least a bit biased and the authors are engaged in the same sort of wishful thinking as creationists who insist 'evolution is all but washed up.'

There are several of examples of bad thinking and bad facts. eg.

The greatest support for atheism came from Charles Darwin, who denied creation and replaced it with the theory of evolution.

Darwinism offered a so-called scientific answer to the question “How did living things and man come into existence?” something atheists had been unable to do for centuries. He claimed that there was a mechanism in nature that gave life to inanimate matter and then produced all the millions of different living species.

I don't believe Darwin 'denied creation,' unless you define creation only as the YEC variety from Genesis. His theory of evolution certainly did not say anything about how life arose from inanimate matter. This is a conflation that many creationists engage in.

Another confusion is the assumption that, because atheists sometimes use evolution to support their position, that must mean that evolution is inherently atheistic. It is a fallacy to suppose that, because someone uses argument A to support position B, when B is shown to be false this also implies A is false.

This type of fallacious thinking has also been used against Christianity. For example, because white southerners used the Bible and their christian beliefs to justify racism and slavery, this does not mean that the Bible is inherently racist. It simply means that some people have drawn an erroneous implication from the information at hand. They very likely would have been racists and slave holders regardless of whether they used the Bible to justify these beliefs. Similarly, many people who are atheists would probably be so regardless of whether the theory of evolution existed or not. The question to ask is "is it an INEVITABLE conclusion of evolution that God does not exist?" I would say, clearly the answer is no.

I agree with Nyril, neither atheists or Christians have a monopoly on evil behavior. The problem in the examples cited is not the ideology, but the desire for power.

[Dilettante]

The articles cited by otseng may be biased, but they are interesting nonetheless. It's clear that their authors have an agenda, but that's not important in my view. What's important is whether what they say is true or not and whether their arguments are sound or not.

I agree with micatala that, in many parts, they've got their thinking muddled up. They see connections where there are none and jump to conclusions. Darwin started out as a theist. The burden of proof lies with the person making a claim, be it theist or atheist. If you don't claim to "know" anything you are under no obligation to prove anything. So yes, the authors did make a number of mistakes. But on the issue of the rise of spirituality they may be right. The problem is, the kind of spirituality that is on the rise (New Age and fundamentalist Islam) is totally anti-rational. I can hardly see that as an advance. To me it seems like a big step... backwards.

And Neo-Paganism is a misnomer. The new spirituality bears no resemblance to classical paganism. I see new secular rites being born: some people have secular christenings at the town hall. But then again I live in Western Europe, easily the most secularized part of the world.

Science never supported atheism, but rather agnosticism. Likewise, science cannot be used to support theism because God is not a suitable subject for scientific study. I think Stephen Jay Gould was right: science and religion don't overlap. God is a useful concept in theology and philosophy, but not in science. It solves ultimate-type problems such as what was there before anything existed, and the like (but all you need then is the god of the philosophers, who most likely doesn't even know we exist).

It's good to point out that atheists qua atheists are not morally superior to theists. But of course, the converse is true also. Yesterday (March 11) my country remembered the people who were killed in our largest train station in the name of Islam (or at least of Islam as interpreted by fundamentalists).
QED wrote:

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing compared to what the Spanish visited upon the South American Indians.

Yes but the comparison I would use is:
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing compared to the Protestant Inquisition of John Calvin in Geneva.
What the Spanish visited upon the South American Indians was nothing compared to what the Anglosaxons visited upon the North American Indians (whose culture was practically wiped out).

[QED]

QED wrote:

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing compared to what the Spanish visited upon the South American Indians.

Yes but the comparison I would use is:
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing compared to the Protestant Inquisition of John Calvin in Geneva.
What the Spanish visited upon the South American Indians was nothing compared to what the Anglosaxons visited upon the North American Indians (whose culture was practically wiped out).

No offence meant, I only picked on the Spanish because they'd already been brought up Anyone looking for a decline in Christianity need look no further than the UK. The hottest new properties on the housing market are de-sanctified churches. I have watched seven out of nine close to worshippers in my area alone during the last thirty or forty years. Of course there's also been a corresponding growth in Mosques

[Dilettante]

No offence taken. I just think people should drop those tired stereotypes about Spain (what about Father Bartolome de las Casas and his defense of the Indians?).
As for the decline in spirituality, I have noticed it here too (although Islam seems on the rise due to immigration from Morocco). On the whole, Western Europe must be the most secularized part of the world. It could be that our paternalistic governments provide so much in the way of security that we simply don't feel we need the church anymore. In the US, however, people depend on the church for much of the security which Europeans derive from the family and the State. It's just an idea, perhaps for another thread.

[spetey]

News media tend to report what they think their listeners want to hear, and many media are well aware of their largely-religious audiences (in the States, anyway). None of those sources are exactly paragons of journalistic integrity. I'm sure it's just as easy to find sites claiming atheism is on the rise.

Flew's "conversion" (which was nothing of the sort--see this link) got media press exactly because budging from atheism toward religion is so rare in academics. On the other hand, conversions from religion to atheism on academic campuses happen so often that they are hardly noteworthy. When a dog bites a man, that's not a story, but when a man bites a dog...

I'm left without a good source for what the numbers are. Does anybody have a good solid citation for whether atheism is shrinking or growing in the population, as a longterm trend? Just curious, of course--I think the arguments for atheism are good whether or not many people have heard them.


spetey

[Nyril]

I found that the wikipedia had a good number of atheism census studies gathered.

Statistics
Due to some societies strongly promoting atheism, and some strongly condemning it, atheism may both be overreported and underreported in different countries. There is a great deal of room for debate as to the accuracy of any method of measurement, as the opportunity for misreporting (intentional and otherwise) a belief system without an organized structure is high. Also, many surveys on religious identification ask people to identify themselves as "Agnostics" or "Atheists", which is potentially confusing, since these terms are not uniformly interpreted, with many people identifying themselves as both.

The following surveys are in chronological order, but as they are different studies with different methodologies it would be inaccurate to infer trends on the prevalence of atheism from them:

A 1995 survey [13] (http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html) attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica indicates that non-religious are about 14.7% of the world's population, and atheists around 3.8%.

In the 2001 Australian Census [14] (http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf ... enDocument) 15.5% of respondents ticked 'no religion' and a further 11.7% either did not state their religion or were deemed to have described it inadequately (there was a popular campaign at the time to have people describe themselves as Jedi).

A 2002 survey by Adherents.com [15] (http://adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html) estimates the proportion of the world's people who are "secular, non-religious, agnostics and atheists" as about 14%.

In a 2003 poll (http://a1692.g.akamai.net/f/1692/2042/1 ... 030416.pdf) in France, 54 percent of those polled identified themselves as "faithful," 33 percent as atheist, 14 percent as agnostic, and 26 percent as "indifferent". [16] (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35454.htm)

A 2004 survey by the BBC [17] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/w ... 518375.stm) in 10 countries showed the proportion of "people who don't believe in God nor in a higher power" varying between 0% and 30%, with an average close to 10% in the countries surveyed. About 8% of the respondents stated specifically that they consider themselves atheists.

A 2004 survey by the CIA in the World Factbook [18] (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factboo ... tml#People) estimates about 12.5% of the world's population is non-religious and about 2.4% are atheists.

A 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center [19] (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=757) showed that in the USA, 12% of people under 30 and 6% of people over 30 can be characterized as non-religious.

The country with the highest percentage of self claimed atheists (59%) is probably the Czech Republic.