…as poor ignorant atheists swamp the nation:
As far as I can see, this is bad news for everybody. Atheists and agnostics like to think of themselves as smarter than the God-bothering trailer trash on Tobacco Road, and deeply dislike the thought that they are losing the argument among the most intellectually qualified and best prepared; religious people have to be concerned for the future of religion when whole social classes are dropping away.
It is also very bad news for the poor. The rich can actually get along without much religion; one of the nice things about being rich is that money can frequently shield you from the consequences of a weak character and bad decisions. If you are rich enough, you can do very poorly in high school but Daddy will have a nice chat with the college president after which the school gets a new gym and you get a slot in the freshman class. You can be pretty sure that the college won’t flunk you out or expel you without a lot of second chances and counseling.
Oh, and if somehow you booze and flirt your way through college and don’t pick up any useful skills, don’t worry. You won’t have any student loans to repay and Daddy will make sure that you find something to do.
The poor aren’t so lucky. The poor kid who wants to get ahead actually has to achieve something. He or she has to sacrifice, defer gratification, learn useful skills, and endure the scorn of classmates who think he or she is a geek and a nerd. Some of us are able to do all that and more without the strength and focus that comes from faith in God — but most of us need all the help we can get.
I’ve been able to manage without, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people can’t. And it seems that the public schools have finally done Dewey’s job.
I look upon religion as a stabilizing feedback element by which the present is moderated by the lagged influence of the past. Ripping that feedback element out, as many libertine elements would like to do, could have far-reaching, unpredictable, unintended, and unpleasant consequences.
I wonder, though, if the poor people avoiding church are true “atheists” in the actual definition of the word, or if they’re just people who prefer to sleep in on Sunday and avoid a place where they get lectured on how to behave, but who still have an unexamined “belief” in God that is closer to superstition. And actually, I don’t think the “poor” in this equation are actually “poor” at all — on the contrary, they have access to free medical care, welfare pay that if not luxurious is certainly adequate for the purchase of enough food to live on and even grow fat on (for many of these “poor” are fat as kings of eld). The underclass, or welfare-coddled class, or whatever you want to call them, have problems that have nothing to do with how much money they make or how prestigious their status in general society is. I suggest that the problem with them isn’t so much that they are “secular” but that they are uneducated — not because education is withheld from them, but because the culture of the lower classes rejects education in all but what pleasures them.
But getting back to the supposed avoidance of the “poor” (that is, the uneducated, badly-fed, underemployed idle lower classes) of organized religion — that doesn’t make them atheists. I’ll bet most of them believe in Jesus and that he not only loves them, but favors them ‘cos they’re “poor and oppressed.” Have you ever read or heard an interview with a rap star? They’re often all too ready to cite a sort of folk-belief in God and Jesus and are always talking about the homies they knew who were gunned down (usually during some illegal activity or as a result of engaging in same) but who are in Heaven.
And that’s just black people. Poor whites may not bother with church as much, but I doubt many of them actually reject the idea of a deity, and probably have at least a distorted version of the religious beliefs they or their parents were raised under. Atheism — the actual conscious rejection of religious belief — is something more common to the educated middle- and upper-classes.
One more thing: so the “poor” are avoiding church. As I’ve pointed out, that may not mean they’ve rejected religion altogether. But it also may mean they’ve converted to another religion. There’s one that seems to be increasingly popular in lower class circles, and has long been popular in the African-American community. It’s especially making inroads in prisons. Can you guess what that religion is? I’m pretty sure that getting the poor to concert to Islam isn’t exactly the solution Mr. Mead is looking for to solve the problems of inequality in society.
I think you have some good points Andrea, however I see the problem you describe as belonging to the past generation. The present generation has only a vague concept of religious values and those values are not enforced either in their home or in their schooling. They have never been to church and other that what they may see on TV occasionally have no real connection with religion. Consequently they have not problem causing all manner of mayhem because they do not fear any sort of afterlife retribution and live only for the moment. Whether there is any retribution is another matter. Since I think most “Religious people control their impulses as much to advance their own community and their standing within it. This generation sees no community whatsoever. They are adrift. The outwardly amoral among them take what they want and abuse anyone that stands in their way. Our society gives them a wide birth and incarcerates them when their behavior has reached a certain threshold. By that time the societal damage is done.
I was thinking about that too. I see no evidence that the poor are any less religious than they were. They probably are just shifting to religions that are beneath the Association of Sociological Association’s radar.
This is a joke right? You actually believe you have a special friend in the sky? And you’re calling the people who don’t stupid?
Judeo-Christian beliefs are only one magical being off being non-theist. They’ve rejected every other superstitious belief for the exact same reasons that non-theists reject all such beliefs.
“You actually believe you have a special friend in the sky?”
Atheism is to Theism as Communism is to Fascism: flip sides of the same coin. The only truly rational response to a question with no answers is agnosticism.
Unfortunately the words agnostic/atheist have both been polluted by those who want to assign a label to people so they can be vilified.
For example, there are many who believe “agnostic” means a belief in the usual Judeo-Christian god but with the added proviso that any such god is impotent within the events of every day life.
Similarly, there are also many who believe that “atheist” means a belief in the non-existence of the usual Judeo-Christian god.
It really shouldn’t be hard to agree on these terms – if people wanted to agree – but they don’t. It’s better to disagree on the terms because then we can waste time arguing about semantics.
I agree with you Bart that not believing in something you have no evidence for is the rational response.. I just think you’ve taken your definitions from the vilifiers and left us without a word to describe this position.. which is why I chose “non-theist”.
To me, agnosticism simply means, “I don’t know.”
I don’t know if there’s a God, a soul, an afterlife, or any of it.
And I’m not so arrogant as to demean people who believe otherwise.
But that’s the problem larry.. it’s not about what the word just means to you, it’s about what the word means to *everyone*. To most of the people I’ve met who call themselves “atheist”, the word means “I don’t believe” but it doesn’t mean just that to everyone else, so they’re left without a word.. and frankly, I think they should embrace that.
I, personally, don’t need a word.. I’m happy to say “I don’t share your beliefs” to anyone who asks.. but many people who are escaping the religious beliefs thrust upon them by their parents feel the need to identify as something else.
In that case, Trent, agnostic means one who doesn’t know or hasn’t decided while atheist means someone with a positive belief in the non-existence of God. In philosophy, they have different definitions in which atheism carries the load and describes everyone without a positive belief in some supernatural deity or deities. Those are the commonly accepted definitions. You haven’t spoken of any issues that require significant nuance past that.
But, none of you ‘labeled’ yourselves.
I find that non-believers, in any God(s) spend a great deal more time ‘labeling’ who falls where on the theist / atheist / agnostic line, in all these discussions than do believers of any religion. With, of course, the exception of radical Muslims.
They think they are right and everyone else should be killed.
(a notion that has generally died down in most of the modern world’s religion)
Karl, use whatever definitions you like.. what do I care? But you could at least be consistent.. “atheism carries the load and describes everyone without a positive belief in some supernatural deity or deities.” Agreed. “atheist means someone with a positive belief in the non-existence of God” that would be a belief.. the absence of belief is not a belief. This is a stupid semantic argument.. the point is that agnostic is no good because of the alternate definition used by some religious people to indicate that gods exist but are impotent – another stupid semantic argument.
Der, so who named the “climate change deniers”? It certainly wasn’t the people who said they’ve yet to be convinced of the warmer agenda. The label was chosen specifically to name people to be opposed and belittle their arguments.
“Atheist” is just a more scientific sounding form of “unbeliever”. It’s used the same way by the believer community.
“I, personally, don’t need a word.. I’m happy to say “I don’t share your beliefs” to anyone who asks.. but many people who are escaping the religious beliefs thrust upon them by their parents feel the need to identify as something else.”
And yet you first commented here by ridiculing people who do have a belief in God. Remember these words?
“This is a joke right? You actually believe you have a special friend in the sky? And you’re calling the people who don’t stupid?”
No one here called atheists stupid. All Rand did was link to an article that made the assertion that atheists and agnostics aren’t as smart as they think they are.
“Atheists and agnostics like to think of themselves as smarter than the God-bothering trailer trash on Tobacco Road.
Odds are, that’s true. I suspect most people aren’t as smart as they think they are. Atheists in particular are very often obnoxious about it.
You’re the one trying to force your views on others, not anyone else here. Your views are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalist evangelicals, just in the opposite direction.
Trent, you’re being a bit more contentious than I would expect of someone who’s secure in his beliefs.
the point is that agnostic is no good because of the alternate definition used by some religious people to indicate that gods exist but are impotent
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of that definition of agnostic. Is it an Australian thing? Or rather, I suppose I could be said to be that sort of agnostic — I don’t know whether or not God exists (that is, there may have been some superintelligence who got the universe going — why not?), but I have trouble believing in a god that actually cares about me personally. That doesn’t really match most peoples’ idea of God. Is that what you mean?
Rand, go check out the root of the word: gnosticism. The fundamental concept is that god is an agent of change in the world and that angels and demons are the manifestation of that change. The agnostic movement was led by religious scholars that challenged the notion that god is somehow involved in the day-to-day affairs of the world. The logical consequence of such a hands-off watchmaker universe is that god is undetectable and unknowable.
It’s one of the common differences in the various Judeo-Christian faiths.. and, on it’s own, is an interesting topic of discussion among believers. As such, it’s a completely useless word for describing the absence of belief.
larry, just as I ridicule people who declare their belief in crystals, auras and horoscopes. You think I should be more respectful of their nonsense beliefs?
Trent, I’m on your side, but lack the energy to do much more here. I will, however, point out to Der Schumpty that perhaps one reason that believers are spending less time labeling others is that they’re too busy trying to figure out which non-believers they’re going to burn first…
to possibly ameliorate that bomb a bit, I will state that tolerance appears to me to have a much higher absolute value for its correlation coefficient with where one stands on the liberal/conservative divide than on the atheist/theist divide. I also think it likely that true atheists (think Christopher Hitchens) may in fact tend to be more conservative, while the more left-leaning atheists simply want to substitute belief in an FSM with belief in a government savior.
Apparently Rand’s blogging SW strips out angle brackets; the “burn first” comment was supposed to have a “0.05 grin” tag appended to it. But only 0.05, not bigger :-/
Well, “atheist” to me connotes an in-your-face type who thinks he has all the answers and everyone else is an idiot. I have known such “atheists”, and I have known “born again” Christians. If compelled to, I would rather keep the company of the latter than the former.
Argh. The word in the sentence “I’m pretty sure that getting the poor to concert to Islam isn’t exactly the solution Mr. Mead is looking for to solve the problems of inequality in society” was supposed to be “convert”. I’m still getting used to this new keyboard, and right after I typed my comment I got a call from my boss asking if I was all right because I was supposed to have been at work two hours previous. (I forgot. I blame $DEITY.)
PS: My $DEITY is of course not the weak, wimpy Sky God floating around in the air but the primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss, Hunter of the servants of the Great Old Ones.
Trent, agnostic is a word invented by the Huxleys in the late 19th-century. It means someone who asserts either a lack of certain knowledge about major theological questions – like whether or not there is a God – or an a priori assertion that such matters are intrinsically unknowable or both. It is not the name of any religious movement, especially not of any movement that believes in angels and demons.
The usual word that describes a belief in a God that does not manifest his existence by mixing in any way in human affairs is Deist. A friend once referred to this as “The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent”.
The literal meaning of atheist is one who is without theist – i.e., religious – belief. There are some atheists who go beyond this lack of theistic belief into a positive assertion of the non-existence of any God, including that of Christianity. Most religious people seem to assume this latter sort of atheist to be normative as these are the ones who tend to be noticed.
My personal experience is that political leftism, in America and Europe, is highly correlated with a rejection of Christianity, but this is far from being equivalent to atheism. A really quite remarkable number of American lefties are unblushing believers in – to cite a by no means exhaustive list – astrology, numerology, pyramid power, healing crystals, “spirituality”, reincarnation, feng shui, ghosts, clairvoyance, precognition, Gaia, Wicca, Buddhism, meditation (Transcendental or otherwise) and any religious belief or practice associated with a Native American tribe. Much of this is attributable to the rampant oikophobia of the American left. They are alienated from anything associated with their own, American, culture, such as Christianity, but are willing, even eager, to take up the religio-superstitious baggage of any non-American culture just because it is non-American.
Dick, mostly agree but Huxley didn’t coin the term, he just made it popular. Religious writings on the subject go back to the Greeks, and it was specifically the objections over angels and demons that made it a topic of contention in Christianity. But we both agree that it isn’t a word to be used for the lack of belief. It really is a shame that “atheist” has become associated with negative belief, but thems the breaks. Hopefully people can at least understand the difference when you explain it to them.
It really is a shame that “atheist” has become associated with negative belief
Trent, if you don’t like that word for negative belief, what do you want? Antitheist? I’d be happy with that, but it will be as hard, or harder, than getting people to distinguish between tax cuts and tax-rate cuts.
it’s much like the difference between amoral and immoral.
“The rich can actually get along without much religion; one of the nice things about being rich is that money can frequently shield you from the consequences of a weak character and bad decisions.”
You know, I am very sympathetic to the social and religious conservative’s desire to be left alone. The ceaseless battle among leftists to position themselves as your “teachers” and intellectual masters is arrogant and wrong, IMO, and will not leave anyone free in the end.
I am a very private person and would very much like to be left alone also, and so I used to imagine there was a basis for cooperation. (Well, there still is one basis for cooperation, albeit a weak one – enemy-of-my-enemy coalition building for political survival)
The problem is, at least according to rhetoric like this, the socons and religious conservatives aren’t too keen on leaving anyone else alone themselves. Do you have any idea how off-putting the idea is that we must be sociopaths or less than human because we do not submit to your religion? The idea that fear of a tyrannical God is the foundation of all moral character? (Why exactly should we trust anyone holding that idea to respect liberty, much less our liberty?)
I don’t think most Christians hold those ideas, or at least act on them in their day to day lives. But the ones on a warpath against what they imagine atheism to be often do.
larry, just as I ridicule people who declare their belief in crystals, auras and horoscopes. You think I should be more respectful of their nonsense beliefs?
Trent,
The Bible-thumpers and Holy Rollers assert with absolute certainty but without any evidence that God exists. Athiests like you assert with absolute certainty but without any evidence that god does not exist. How are you any different or better than they are?
“…just as I ridicule people who declare their belief in crystals, auras and horoscopes. You think I should be more respectful of their nonsense beliefs?”
Seriously, now, these are different levels of “nonsense”. The gods of the major religions have endured precisely because they are too vaguely defined, and the origins of the legends and tales too remote in the distant past, to have any way of conclusively refuting them. But, crystals, auras and horoscopes? These things can be tested in real time, indeed have been tested and consistently found wanting.
“The Bible-thumpers and Holy Rollers assert with absolute certainty but without any evidence that God exists.”
I don’t think I would go that far. There is certainly circumstantial evidence. Our very existence here and the nature of physical reality itself begs the question of, how could that have all come to be by mere chance?
Hard core evolutionists insist they know how it all happened. But, their knowledge base is incomplete. Allow me to set this up further by pulling up a paragraph from Douglas Adams’ THGTTG:
Short of an infinite improbability field generated in a closed timelike loop by one of our incredibly advanced future descendents, how exactly did the the moment of genesis come about? And, even if we ever manage to answer how, can we ever hope to answer why? Why do these extraordinary molecules which can cling together in such a extraordinary fashion even exist in the first place?