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Author | Topic: Are Atheists Mentally Ill | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3
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Just trying to keep the issues straight: Is the claim correct that believers are healthier than atheists? I have a lot of trouble believing this one just on a demographic basis. Believers as a group are less wealthy than atheists and are more likely to belong to the lower socio-economic classes. Both factors are correlated with poorer health. I agree with your reasoning there, but "Believers as a group are less wealthy than atheists" - where does this assertion come from? Is this assertion any more credible than anything the pro-religion links say?
It is well known that participation within a social group is correlated with better health and mental well-being, but atheists have social groups, too. EvC Forum is one. (the part I bolded) - truer words were never written!!
Even if the claim were true, is it evidence for God? Just the "healthier" part, probably not. All the contents of that link plus the next three you listed? Could be.
hard-wired for faith We knew this already. A paragraph from that link;
quote: "ANY FORM OF BELIEF" I'm afraid the scientific community is trying to exclude themselves from the same reluctance that religious people have to alter their worldview, and I don't think it's very honest. I've been noticing several threads here where religious posters like GDR or Ossat honestly state that they have a faith in something, and the evolutionist/atheist posters, while they may not directly say it, they strongly imply "okay, you have faith, whereas I have facts and evidence." Everyone has a worldview that's acquired at an earlier age than in-depth scientific studies. Which means that facts and evidence didn't necessarily lead to their atheism, but that atheism led them to try to reinforce their beliefs with science. It's a human trait that atheists do just the same as religious people. But the following snip from the "nicer" link probably sums it all up the best;
quote: Balance is needed, as atheists try to elevate their worldview as automatically more credible and worthy of establishment than religious worldviews.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
Why are you questioning something that can merely be Googled? I was looking for *evidence*. At your request, I googled "atheists make more money", and somewhat expected to see at least one link on the first first few pages, if not more than one, to reputable statistical sources that proved your claim. Not there, mostly just links to atheist sites.
It is well known that religiosity declines with increasing income and education, It is also well known that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", but if that is stated within miles of anything scientific, evidence is demanded. Telling the scientists to google it doesn't seem to work too well. The main reason I'm skeptical of that claim is because so many atheists are also liberals, and it doesn't make sense that people who work hard, take risks, and succeed with money would favor a political party that wants to take away the fruits of their labors and redistribute it to others. And yes, I have evidence that atheists tend to be liberal;
quote: Nones on the Rise | Pew Research Center There's always the possibility that atheists make more money than religious people in general, but it doesn't always take high IQ, skills and risk-taking to make money. Many in the Hollywood crowd do quite well, but they just do it with their natural good looks, nothing they themselves had a hand in determining. The guy who advertises for Allstate insurance makes a nice living with only his deep, studly voice. It would make more sense that that type of money maker could favor liberalism, they're largely out of touch with the realities of risks, production, and hard work. So if you can't, or won't, provide me with evidence for your claim that atheists are such good capitalists, I guess we'll just have to table that part of this discussion.
and atheists are underrepresented in scores of negative categories, such as murderers, robbers, rapists, drug addicts and divorcees. Without evidence, I have to call that claim subjective as well. There is all sorts of flexibility in how people can be labeled concerning religion, and who is doing the labeling. If atheists are so skilled at avoiding negative categories, it seems that sometime, somewhere, they would have been able to put together a really nice free, wealthy, blissful society. They haven't.
Some people have a worldview that the Earth is flat or that the Sun revolves around the Earth. "Worldview" is just a synonym for wishful thinking and has nothing to do with facts, science or reality. "Worldview" is actually a very relevant, useful term, one that the scientific community probably wishes didn't exist. It;
quote: Worldview - Wikipedia The word serves to bring the scientific community down off its plateau of superiority, and shows all the scientific theories and faiths to be no more relevant than religious beliefs. Everyone has a worldview, and I think it's obvious that a person develops his/her first, and usually final, worldview at a fairly young age, probably age 12 to 14. All these implications that atheists only deal in facts and evidence isn't honest. They do the same thing religious people do, they start with a conclusion, then search for evidence to back it up. From your earlier message;
I myself am neither an atheist, nor an agnostic, nor a member of or adherent to any organized religion. So you're completely neutral? You have no worldview? If that's your claim, it's really hard to have a discussion with you. You stated above that atheists are under-represented in negative categories - how can any statistics be gathered if we have an unknown, and unknowable amount of "neutrals" like yourself? I think you're a "naturalist", one who sides 99% of the time with anti-religion. Isn't that a fair assessment? I'd like this thread to take a closer look at "the impact of religious practice on social stability", from the Heritage Foundation link found within this threads topic link, but I'll bow out now if this thread was only started to be an atheist love-fest. I'll use the upcoming rage and forum rule breaking from Dr. A and others, with no administrative discipline, as my gauge.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
It *is* well known that religiosity declines with increasing income and education, and I *am* surprised that you didn't know that. I live in the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio. Lots of ghettos on both sides of the river, FILLED with people with no religious background, no education, and very little income. I see the same things on the news from around New York, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc. I'm a blue collar worker, and am often surrounded by LOTS of people with no religious background, no education, and very little income. I sometimes tend to let my own actual experiences lead me to conclusions, or at least use them to balance the proclamations I see from special interests, like the scientific community, or the news media.
I thought you were pretending ignorance so that I would go off and waste my time finding evidence for you. I'm not surprised you didn't find the evidence you sought with the search terms "atheists make more money". Try "religiosity vs income", which works better because it uses words I actually said. In doing that, I found this NY Times link (descended from another one) on the first page, which contained the following paragraph;
quote: And another link, from your search suggestion, with a paragraph from it;
quote: Or Israel, or Italy, or Greece, or Ireland for that matter, according to that chart. It only makes sense that what may be true for the entire world isn’t necessarily true for some countries, including the United States. Don’t you think it would be important to make that distinction between the two, since the link of this thread's topic strongly indicates that it concerns the United States?
Concerning your political claims, this thread isn't about conservatives versus liberals, I think it partly is, because if the claim is made that atheists are more educated and successful than religious people, it's synonymous with a claim that liberalism, or the Democrat party, possesses more worthy, educated influence.
but I'll address this one thing: marc9000 writes: And yes, I have evidence that atheists tend to be liberal; Why would anyone question this? It's as well known as religiosity decreasing with increasing income and education. Because as I said, it doesn't make sense that those who earn more would generally politically favor the politics that would redistribute (take away from them) more of what they earn.
Concerning worldview, like many of the religious you seem to believe that the words used are more important than the evidence behind them. To draw your attention back to the examples you ignored (even though you quoted them), your worldview has just as much evidence as a flat Earth worldview or an Earth-at-the-center worldview. As does the atheist worldview. It has nothing for godless origins of life. It only has desperate wishes that it does, and the various hypothesis and experiments it performs in that regard are not evidence. When they snowball, branch out etc, they can start morphing into claims of being evidence, but they still aren't in reality. I think you’re worse with the word "evidence" than I am with the word "worldview".
Concerning the topic I can only repeat that the greater wealth and education of those with the least religiosity argues against the premise of this thread. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the link that is this thread's topic;
quote: "UCLA, University of Texas, Duke University in America, Harvard....."— I had the idea that this thread was about religiosity in the United States, not worldwide.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
I think your method of gathering information on religious background is highly flawed. I actually agree with that, in some cases. But here are my exact words;
quote: The bolded part is what applies to this thread. Since I used my skepticism to further explore the claim that was made, I found that it made a lot of sense in this case.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
marc9000 writes: I'd like this thread to take a closer look at "the impact of religious practice on social stability", from the Heritage Foundation link found within this threads topic link,.... There's considerable variation in religiosity around the world, marc, and also considerable regional variation in your own country. I agree.
I was interested to read this on the health benefits of religiosity. Interested, because I happen to know that there's a general negative correlation between high religiosity and longevity around the world, and also within the United States. Your link "states by life expectancy" shows many different classifications for the different states, but shows only a 5 year variation between the two extremes. I think that's pretty insignificant, one of the most insignificant parts of the Heritage Foundation link. If it interests you that's fine - I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on it. But I need to clarify what I meant by the "social stability" part of the sentence of mine that you quoted. I was more interested in the following statements from the Heritage Foundation link;
quote: quote: quote: The last one especially, earlier in this thread we saw the claim that atheists are less likely to get divorced. Both can't be right.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
Blue collar workers are very religious as well. I don't think you have your story straight. Well yes, many days I hear God's name mentioned several times. With the word "damn" behind it.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
Your NY Times link didn't work for me. I'll check it again some other time.
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