Reply to I don't get Atheism

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "I don't get Atheism"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Let's take a step back from the hyperbole and insults.

The OP asked why it seems like so many people are turning to atheism, which is a reasonable sociological question.

There's a consistent correlation between economic and educational status and a lack of religiousity. While correlation does not equal causation, there are some drivers that lead to the conclusion that economic development and education tend to lead to a reduction in religious participation and belief.

From a scientific perspective, deities have historically been invoked to explain natural phenomena. Gods were responsible for the seasons, weather, birth, death, the sun, the moon, etc. Over time, science has pushed back the boundaries of the inexplicable over and over, removing events from the realm of mystical phenomena and placing them in the realm of the explicable and comprehensible.

When you can explain how things happen, that removed mystery and the need for a deific cause. Science is on the verge of pushing those explanations back to the initial creation of our universe, and many of the leading hypotheses also lead to the conclusion that ours is but one "universe" in either a much larger space of an infinite number of "universes" or a "meta-space" of an infinite number of other "universes."

Either way, we've been demoted over time from being the center of the universe, to one of several planets in a solar system, to a small planet orbiting an unregarded yellow sun in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, to one planet within one of an infinite number of "universes" in a multiverse. With each step, the odds of an entity sufficiently powerful to sit outside the applicable "space" and create it grow increasingly incomprehensible, and if such an entity were to exist, the reasons why it would have any interest in us as a life form are similarly incomprehensible.

At the same time, we are discovering more and planets that could harbor life. Again, we are losing the idea of uniqueness, and that makes it less likely that a creator, if it exists, would consider humans particularly special.

So the promulgation of all of that scientific knowledge is one reason people are turning away from deities and religions, because they don't feel the need for the religious explanation of how things happen.

From a sociological perspective, historically a community had one religion, and expressing doubt or questioning that religion was incredibly risky. When a king ruled by divine right, questioning religion was questioning that divine right, and was a very unhealthy thing to do.

Even leaving the king out of things, questioning the religion of your particular community could lead to excommunication - exile from the community - which was effectively a death sentence since everyone relied on their communities for survival to a much greater degree than they do now. So in the past questioning religion was a much greater personal threat, and there was no way to identify similarly doubtful individuals with whom to discuss your questions.

In another vein, historically, people couldn't read and, in the case of Christianity, the holy texts were written in Latin, which only the priests and the most educated classes could read. The Bible contains numerous contradictions and errors that once an educated society is able to read for themselves, without the need for a priestly class, cause people to have doubts and consider thinking for themselves.

In the modern era, education about other religions and other cultures, as well as historical study of the mythologies than underlie Christianity (e.g., similarities to the stories of Mithras, for example), cause people to question the authoritative nature of any single religion, and modern communications via the internet give those who question a place to find information and others who similarly question and doubt the various religious traditions. When you're not at risk of being excommunicated and socially isolated for doubting, you're much more likely to continue exploring alternatives to the belief structure of your parents and community group.

So, more education at a societal level means people lose the need for deities to explain natural phenomena and also enables people to read the religious texts themselves and make their own decisions about their flaws. More education also exposes people to other religious traditions, leading to doubt about the authoritative nature of their own traditions.

More economic development means better communication and opportunity to move within the society, lessening the risk of excommunication as a result of questioning the dominant paradigm, and also provides better opportunities for meeting others who share those doubts and can provide a separate community of support for doubters.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics