I'm starting to doubt if atheism is compatible with science
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Of course, one of the inconvenient facts that the trolls here have omitted, delliberately I suspect, is the prevalence in the USA of a particularly venomous brand of hatred of atheists, encouraged and abetted by leaders of conservative and fundamentalist religious groups in the Bible Belt, that is found nowhere else in the developed world. In Europe and Japan, exhortations to subject atheists to violent repression are usually regarded as the purview of law enforcement, and hate crimes against atheists are thankfully few in number. By contrast, politically supported hate speech aimed at atheists, is present in quantity and is frequently murderous in tone in the USA, particularly in the former slave states. A disturbing product of that climate of politically supported hatred of atheists is, of course, the murder of Larry Hooper.
Quite simply, all we as atheists want, is for the mythology fanboys to stop fucking our lives, stop fucking over science education, medical research and the operation of civil society, and in some cases stop fucking underage kids. But of course, the moment you tell this to the mythology fanboys, out come the synthetic bleatings of "persecution".
Well said Calilasseia,
All I've ever wanted is for all the major religions to be treated like any other corporation.
Pay their own way, pay taxes, be held accountable, not be immune from criticism etc...
Just because someone believes in their imaginary friend, it shouldn't be taken serious by governments, until the claim is evidenced and proven beyond reasonable doubt.
I just came across a slightly less-cringe article that brought across similar arguments. The common quality of all of them is that they're persuasive pieces and not informational. It's lazy to just try to sway people toward your beliefs by doing nothing but being emotional on your keyboard. Although I am impressed that there is actually an effort to do more than just "circumvent our logic" the youth group pastors could not have come up with one.
> I'm starting to doubt atheism. I've come across a twitter account named Devon Shapiro who created a thread of scientific papers on religion and atheism
He did not really create a thread of scientific papers. He has cited pseudo-scientific, outdated and biased articles.
> It seems that scientifically atheism is inferior to religion, and results in things like higher rates of depression, suicide, rape, murder, crime. It causes less happiness, increases drug abuse and alcoholism. I'm starting to think maybe Islam was right in banning atheism, maybe Saudi Arabia has a logical reason for criminalizing and killing atheists.
First, I am copying the date of his article- september 2010, Volume 49, Issue 3, pp 377–384 |. Second, I investigated his references as well. I found many references were taken from Muslims and Christians, none from any neutral scientist. I am copying the first reference - Abdel-Khalek, A. (2004). Neither altruistic suicide, nor terrorism but martyrdom: A Muslim perspective. Archives of Suicide Research, 8(1), 99–113. doi: 10.1080/13811110490243840. Third, have you ever heard of NCBI ? NCBI is a database coherent to biotechnology and biomedical science. Many scientists and biologists publish their research papers on NCBI, not on springer. Fourth, I am providing you a sad reality that people who think religion is important, have more suicidal rates than others. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990512/. This article is not authored by a Christian/Jew/Mulsim, rather it is authored by MD and PHD holders in relevant subjects. For an example, Ryan E Lawrence, MD, MDiv. The article was written in 2017 so yes it is obviously newer as well. Fifth, global happiness index produced a report in 2018 in which it observed that the top 10 happiest countries are least religious. https://www.christiantoday.com/article/10-happiest-countries-in-the-worl...
> More religion results in lower alcoholism, marijuana use, smoking, crime, depression, anxiety, & results in higher self-esteem and well-being. Less religion results in the exact opposite and has an overall negative effect on life in all categories.
Again your article is too old. I am copying the date one more time-- Journal of Adolescence
Volume 35, Issue 2, April 2012,. And this article has no reference or external link to introspect. I have a map of federal prison system- https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTcbeukYsHdVCD5P6.... As you can see, atheists were only 0.10 percent among all inmates. A research organised in 2017, also approves of this fact- https://today.uconn.edu/2017/08/think-atheists-likely-serial-killers/#. The people who migrated from Islamic countries i.e. Morocco, Lebanan and Pakistan have more criminal rates than indigenous people. Take an example of Denmark because it is a secular and atheistic country. Male Labanese immigrants have 1.5x more criminal rates than the national Denmark's average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime. Moreover, this is a list of the top 10 countries, highest in rape rates- http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/rape-statistics-by-country/. Only one of them country like Sweden is an atheistic country and all remained countries are christian ones.
> For example does atheism have objective morality?
Every being is an altruist and violent together. But atheism is not responsible for any atheist's good/bad activity. In contrast to atheism, theism is responsible for theist's every activity because theism has a doctrinal scripture, priests/bishops.
How do atheists logically determine what is right/wrong aka good/bad?
Ethics defines what is good and bad. Until one has free will, one has knowledge what will be the result of his good/bad actions in future.
> It's really looking like religious people are right, especially Islam.
Are ISIS, Boko-haram, Taliban that constituted from 90%+ Muslims (especially wahabis) right ? What are you talking about ?
> All this time I thought they were just killing atheists for no reason, but they clearly do have a logical reason to ban ideologies like atheism.
Atheism is not an ideology but communism and capitalism are. And religious people have killed one another more than they have killed atheists. According to your absurd logic, they must have the highest suicidal, crime rates and depression. I would suggest you to read the Koranic verses 48:29, 60:1, 66:9 and the Biblical verse John 15:6.
To me the OP does not understand what atheist is/means.
The big hint being: he calls it "atheism" like it is any other religious 'ism.
It is silly, it is a bit like calling a: "not a stamp collector" to be in the group antiStampCollectorism. Then try to attack the not stamp collectors using a label that no one agreed to.
I am an atheist, I am also agnostic, skeptic, etc etc. I do not consider myself a follower of "atheism" whatever that means to who ever says it. (Could be just about anything!)
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