The future of theism in an atheist world.

[Gawen]

Texas...*chucklin*

[KDbeads]

Texas...*chucklin*

We ain't a religious country.  We are right and everyone ought take care to listen to how right we are and we've changed the school lessons to prove it.    

[Tank]

Thank you all for your inputs. I'm thinking over what has been written.

[Gawen]

C'mon Tank...whatcha gotta say???

[Tank]

 Still thinking.

[Tank]

I would really like to get more input from theists on this question. Would you feel threatened in a secular world? What are your feelings about the apparent rise in athistic views and the ability of atheists to form groups on the internet?

Ask and ye shall receive!

BTW, wow... haven't seen so many biased viewpoints since I had breakfast with a bunch of born-agains...
I think you'll find quite a few intelligent theists, and a fair share of sub-par atheists.

I too have met a few intelligent theists but the watch word there appears to be few. On the other hand I have yet to meet a sub-par atheist, I really haven't. I have met a few that are anti-theist and bigoted but not dumb. But I haven't met who you have so obviously there are some sub-par atheists around.  

Ok, so an "Atheist World" (was that the sequel to West World?)
I don't see it ever happening.

Neither do I, at least not for a long time after the Singularity, unless the robots are theists as they are in Battlestar Gallactica!

Now, an Agnostic world?  That's possible.
For me, it's less about "Is there a god?" or "Is there no god?", and more about our comfort with being able to say "I don't know".

Hopefully a secular agnostic world with a tolerant attitude to the beliefs of the individual would be an ideal to aspire to.

Faith, Belief, and Hope are a large part of being human.  The expression of them through religion is the flaw, IMHO.  Take a bit of time to think this through.  How much a part of your life is belief?

95% of life is belief based because I rarely have to cite evidence to support my position on a day to day basis. However my beliefs are generally based on facts as far as I can tell, what I consider to be fairy stories.

If it were all about being rational and intelligent, we'd be SkyNet.

Humans won't lose their imagination, we get too much enjoyment from it.

As for extremists... It only takes one nutjob with a bomb to take out a bunch of geniuses.
That's not rational.  It's not logical.  It's why, in some cases, the nutjobs win.  And why they won't go away.

Fair point.

That's the skinny, now let's chew the fat!
JoeActor

Yep!

[Thumpalumpacus]

Boy, the first half of this thread was pretty self-congratulatory.  I've met plenty of smart theists, and dumb atheists.

As to what happens if and when atheists become a majority, I don't think too much will, because the transition will be supplied by the moderate theists.  Given that them, and their money, support the current fundies, that will diminish the resources that the fundies now lavish on TV shows and such here in America.

The reduction of propaganda will further undermine their powerbase.

Might the remainder turn to violence?  Sure.  But even that will erode their own basis, as we can then contrast their bombs against "turn the other cheek" etc -- a sort of theological judo.

[Tank]

Ok time to lay my cards on the table.



I think the battleground for hearts and minds is the 'Cultural Theist'. This is where I feel the bulk of humanity fall. They are (insert belief here) because that's what they were born into and surrounded by most of, if not all, of the time. They are the visible face of most religions. Information on the internet is undoubtedly working in favour of a rationalist world view simply because many cultural theists have never been exposed to alternative views.

The trouble is when the 'cultural theist' is exposed to alternative world views they can jump on of two ways, either towards a more agnostic world view or towards a strong theistic view. I would classify this as a person who has made an active choice to engage with a particular faith, they are not simply going with the flow of those around them.

So as the 'cultural theists' work out their world view the theistic world view becomes more concentrated as the 'cultural theists' evaporate away. This concentration worries me as the Radical and Fundamentalist theists have a ready recruiting ground in the Strong and Convinced theists.

At the moment the 'Cultural Theists' act as a buffer between non-belief and delusional belief which I would suggest would be Convinced theist and beyond, the Strong atheist is still in a state of explorations and is thus not a totally lost cause.

So if atheism erodes theism I see the Convinced theists and above becoming more and more marginalised, ridiculed and radicalised and we'll end up with a highly concentrated group of fundamentalist nut jobs to deal with.

Is my view valid?

[Argie]

I think the best we can realistically aspire to is a secularized world, with secularized governments, secularized legislation, etc.  However as it was well said before, the vast majority is still theist or live under theocracies, and here lies a great danger to the free world (I really don´t want to sound like Bush)... Islam is the fastest growing religion, and in my view Islam is not only a religion, but a political project.  The west must very wary of the advance of Islam.

THE GREATESTS HERESIES (Hillaire Belloc 1938):  "... it has always seemed to me posible, even probable, that there would be a resucitation of Islam, and that our children or grandsons will be witness to or participate in the renewed struggle between Western Civilization and its major and most ferosious opponent in the last thousand years.  The posibility of a new rise of Islam might seem fantacious, but this is only due to the fact that man have always been powerfully affected by the immediate past... I would venture to say that he is actually blinded by it.  Not so long ago, only about one hundred years before the Independece of the USA, Viennes was almost taken over by the ottoman imperial muslim armies, and saved by a pan-european christian army under the King of Poland, on a date that should be amongst the most famous of history:  September 11th 1683."